


In Light and Ruin

by crzy_wrtr10



Category: MATCH: The Society (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Boatloads of angst, Gen, Hurt, Not so much comfort, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2740769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crzy_wrtr10/pseuds/crzy_wrtr10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shae remembers falling through the darkness in the hospital. She isn't sure what to expect, but waking up in the strange, new, broken world she's in isn't it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Light and Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again lovelies. 
> 
> More MATCH fic. Also, I highly recommend you check out the episode - [here at Colaborator](http://match.colaborator.com/season-1/ep-4-society/) \- and also check out some of the interactive content. It's really pretty cool, and if you like to write fiction, there's a whole forum for it. And it could even become canon.
> 
> Hasn't seen a beta. Feel free to cackle at my typos.

She remembered, briefly, being cold.

Shae rested her head against the side of the dumpster, knees pulled tightly to her chest, and surveyed the new world around her. It was old, fractured in places, and the very antithesis of “new” but it was unfamiliar to her. The only things that felt right were the ache in her chest, centered on her sternum, and knowing, somehow, this wasn’t where she had expected to wake up. 

Of course, she had expected to wake up somewhere bright white and reeking of the kind of surgical sterility she’d seen in the glimpse of the operating room when they’d moved her from the gurney to the table. 

_How are you feeling?_

**I’m cold.**

The bone-deep chill hadn’t left her, and she curled more tightly around herself. A breeze blew down through the cluttered alleyway, disturbing some loose papers across the cracked pavement from her. The clouds overhead parted briefly, and the weak sunlight glinted off something small and silver. 

Shae partially uncurled. The sight of whatever it was stirred something in her, and she peeked around the edge of the dumpster. There was nobody in sight. Alone as alone could be, she was, even if the feeling of being watched didn’t shake itself from between her shoulders.

_Hands threaded the open edge of the keychain through one of the zipper tags on the worn, dark blue backpack. The middle disk of it spun freely in the ring of silver; a thumb ghosted along the inscribed words._

She’d found the backpack next to her when she’d woken up, and some gut warning had made her take it with her. Pushing a hunk of dirty hair back from her face, she eased forward onto her knees. Once she made sure the straps on the backpack were snug against her shoulders, she pushed up into a crouch. Whatever that little silver thing out there was, it was just as important to her as the backpack was. Even if she couldn’t exactly say why.

The breeze quieted, the papers stilled, and nothing moved. She eased up onto the balls of her feet, crouched like a football linebacker, and let her heart rate settle. 

Her heart.

_She paused, one hand pressing over her sternum as her heart did a series of flip-flops. If she focused more on dragging in even breaths as she stood there, every muscle still and tense, she could fool herself into distinctively not thinking about how her heart would, possibly, jump its rhythm and not pick back up._

Leaning most of her weight on one hand, she rubbed the other up and down her chest. The fabric of her shirt caught against the scar over her sternum, and she had a flash of memory – of bright, bright white lights all around her from where she lay flat on her back – and it was gone almost as quickly as it came, taking her breath with it.

“Focus, Shaela,” she murmured. “Focus.”

Clearing her mind, she zeroed in on her target again, leaned back slightly on the heels of her red Chuck Taylors, and rocketed forward. She made it across the open space to the thing – the keychain – and reached for it.

Something large and heavy slammed into her from the side the moment her fingers touched it.

Her left shoulder took most of her weight, impacting hard against the pavement, and whatever hit her rolled over her. She panicked, closing her fist around the keychain so as not to lose it, and kicked out with both legs. The thing, mottled blue and strangely humanoid in a completely sinister way, moved smoothly into a crouch. 

Shae scrambled to get her feet under her, and turned her back. She realized the exact moment she did it, because it took advantage of her, shoving her face-first into the pavement hard enough to split her lip and give her bruises.

Heart pounding wildly in her chest, she twisted and squirmed, yelling out obscenities or random words, anything in order to draw attention to what as going on. Someone would hear her. Someone would come help.

If there was any help to be had in a world like this.

And all the while she kept her fingers locked tight around the keychain. She didn’t know why it was important, but it was, and she wasn’t going to let it have it.

It reared up, straddling her thighs and pushing down on her back with both hands, one high on her shoulder, and one in the middle. Her eyes bugged out as she fought to breathe, left hand scrabbling uselessly back to what held her. 

_Her chest was heavy, and she felt like she could sink through the table, through the darkness, and come out on the other side. Into what she didn’t know._

**Thwack.**

The thing jerked, and Shae sucked in a lungful of air, the blacks spots dancing along her vision retreating enough to let her see again. 

**Thwack. Thwack.**

A bright white light. Screaming. 

_Darkness. Various beeping. The wail of a heart monitor that showed a flatline._

Shae curled up on her side on the pavement, clutching the keychain to her chest and trying to slow her ragged breathing. A woman with a bow and a quiver of arrows looked at her unflinchingly, and while Shae didn’t understand the world she know found herself in, she did understand one thing: whoever this woman was, she was safe. 

“Come on. Up you get.” Another set of hands helped her to a sitting position, and then to her feet. 

She looked over her shoulder at a scruffy-looking man, and murmured a quiet, “Thank you.”

“You alright?” he asked. 

Nodding dumbly, she trailed after the woman when he gave her a small, gentle shove. The keychain was still in her clenched hand, and she stumbled along, a stranger to this new, violent world, vulnerable in ways she hadn’t been before. 

“Here.” The man nudged the elbow of her free hand, holding out a knife to her handle first. 

Shae wrapped her fingers around it, and sturdy weight of it settled her. 

_Monitors screamed. It felt almost like she were having an out-of-body experience, in that she looked down on herself from higher point of view. Her back arched. The flatline remained where a sinus rhythm should have been, and she had, as the edges of everything went dark, one last startling revelation._

_She’d_ **died.**


End file.
